


Testing Results

by windsweptfic



Category: Captain America (2011)
Genre: M/M, Torture, disturbing imagery, drugged states
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 01:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windsweptfic/pseuds/windsweptfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a <a href="http://capkink.livejournal.com/810.html?thread=108586#t108586">prompt</a> at Livejournal's capkink community: Bucky torture, Steve/Bucky h/c. Contains torture, pretty creepy imagery and non-consensual drug experimentation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Testing Results

The walls were breathing.

Bucky stared doggedly at the ceiling above, trying to keep his mind from focusing on the unnatural movement around him. This wasn't real, and he knew it. Whatever drug Zola had injected into him this time, it had to be something to impair his thinking. Walls didn't breathe. Walls weren't alive. They didn't move.

He'd been taken from the prison cells almost immediately upon arriving, separated from the tattered remnants of the 107th and dragged to an 'isolation unit' deep in the factory. They'd barely let him get out his name and rank before shoving a needle into his arm. The drugs ranged in their effects: heavy sedatives that made the world foggy around him, prickly uppers that had his body twitching to get out of the restraints and let off the energy trapped inside him. One made him itch all over for hours; another felt like it was burning him from the inside-out.

None of that compared to this.

"Test subject number forty-seven in the Lysergsäure-diethylamid trials. Subject is male, American, around five-foot-ten…"

The walls let out an unhappy sigh and Bucky clenched his teeth together, struggling to ignore the breath that ghosted across his skin as the hairs on his arms stood on end. The concrete seemed to ripple, stirring like a shark beneath the water, and when a sharp movement caught his eye he reflexively snapped his attention to it. A cabinet of unmarked bottles and vials was trying to creep across the floor toward him, the doorknobs staring malevolently as a low chuckle reverberated through the room.

Bucky squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

"James Barnes," he muttered, trying to reassure himself of his own sanity. "Sergeant. Serial number 32557241. James Barnes—"

"…the subject was injected with six hundred micrograms, and has begun to exhibit symptoms an hour after dosage…"

Checkers and stripes swirled around on the insides of Bucky's eyelids. Zola's droning voice made it impossible to block the effects of the drug and the kaleidoscope in his brain kept him from even finding peace in darkness. He opened his eyes helplessly—just in time to see the ceiling stretch itself out into infinity, swallowing the universe whole as it disappeared into a mere pinprick. He sucked in a sharp breath only to taste purple and baritone on his tongue.

"Barnes," he gasped. "Sergeant James Barnes—"

A shrill scream pierced through the laboratory as the cabinet exploded outward. Millions of tiny creatures careened around the room with high-pitched cackles and painful shrieks, yellow-glowing eyes all watching Bucky as they circled around him like vultures over prey. They had fangs and flitted around like cannibalistic flying stick bugs, and Bucky _knew_ that he was starting to lose it. He jerked against his restraints in a moment of wild panic before closing his eyes again, ignoring the spirals of orange and blue that floated across his vision.

"James. James Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes…"

"…evidence of hyperventilation, heavy perspiration and hyperreflexia…"

Nothing was real. None of this was real. Only he was real. Except Zola was also real, and the factory, and the attack that had gotten them captured—but everything he was experiencing wasn't. It couldn't be. It was the effect of the drug, some horrible drug that made him see things and hear things and—

Teeth sank into his thigh and Bucky screamed.

His eyes snapped open, wide and terrified as the swarm descended down upon him, tiny fangs piercing into his skin in sharp, burning bites. He thrashed against the straps holding him down, trying to throw off the creatures as they tore open his skin and burrowed deep inside, moving beneath the surface and delving into tissue and muscle and bone, eating him alive, gnawing him down into scraps so small they wouldn't fill a thumbnail. His heart pounded against his chest like it was trying to escape them too, attempting to burst out through his ribcage. Panic turned everything golden and red, and it was only with the last vestiges of his sanity that he managed to grasp at the strings that kept him grounded in himself.

"Barnes!" he choked. "Sergeant James Barnes—oh god, they're eating me alive, they're—Sergeant, sergeant, _sergeant_ , serial number—please don't, don't—thirty-two fifty-five-- _this isn't real_ I know it isn't, it isn't—seventy-two forty-one, sergeant, Barnes, sergeant, _please_ …"

"…and appears to be experiencing hallucinations."

Bucky sagged against the medical cot as his mind overloaded, staring up blankly at the warped ceiling as he was consumed into nothing. Zola muttered nearby but he barely caught what was being said, body twitching in helpless spasms as he melted away into a pool of blood and bits of brain matter.

"I will continue testing LSD-25 on the subject tomorrow."

Zola's footsteps slowly left, every one like an elephant stomping on the ground. But it didn't matter because Bucky wasn't in the room anymore, floating on a sea of blank emptiness, submerged with everything else that didn't exist.

He stayed there for a moment that stretched beyond infinity, a second and a year and a millennia passing before a familiar voice pulled him away from the precipice, and he was able to look up into a pair of wide blue eyes. The darkness faded and his body pulled itself back together and, finally, he knew that something was real.

"Steve…"

 

* * *

 

An eternity passed in fire and trees and trees on fire; lungs on fire and legs on fire and Bucky was fairly certain he was dying. He'd been running ever since Steve found him strapped to the lab gurney, urged on by the sound of Steve's voice and the thought that if he ran fast enough, he might be able to escape the blackness edging his vision.

He was wrong.

"Bucky!"

Bucky pried his eyes open—when had he closed them?—at the panic in Steve's voice, all of his natural instincts screaming to go reassure him, to make everything okay. But when his vision cleared he found himself staring at grass and boots, his head lying on the forest floor and dirt in his mouth. He blinked and a moment later ridiculously strong arms were pulling him up, cradling him against an equally-ridiculous chest.

"Steve?" he mumbled, surprised to find his tongue thick in his mouth and his eyelids heavy. Gentle fingers ran through his hair and he managed to roll his head to the side, looking up into Steve's worried face.

"You collapsed," Steve explained softly, able to read the confusion Bucky was feeling because that was what Steve did, and that was what Steve had always been able to do. "I gave the order to make camp for the night and you just…keeled over."

"Oh." Bucky frowned, trying to work his fuddled mind around that statement. He remembered escaping the factory and meeting up with the rest of the prisoners. He remembered the long trek through the forest with the trees that hissed and tried to reach out to strangle him—except those weren't real, he didn't think—and he remembered Steve giving orders and handing out duties like the captain he had become. He remembered finally coming to a halt, and feeling safe for the first time in weeks.

"I'm tired," he admitted at last. Steve's eyebrows knit together, but he just nodded, accepting the aversion for now. He gathered Bucky in his arms and stood up, turning toward the truck they'd commandeered from Schmidt's forces, his grip only tightening when Bucky squawked.

"Put me down!" he yelped, struggling ineffectively. "I'm not some wilting-lily _dame_ —"

"So stop screeching like one?" Steve suggested, his lips curling in a grin. It didn't hide the concern in his eyes or the almost desperate hold he had, but Bucky was willing to take the lifeline of normalcy thrown to him. He managed to twist his arm so he could cuff the side of Steve's head, a weak attack that likely wasn't even felt.

"And maybe I'll start wearing tights, while I'm at it," he shot back.

"They're actually surprisingly comfortable," Steve replied, carrying him around to the back of the truck. The wounded had already been unloaded, shifted into tents, and it was empty when Steve helped him sit on the tailgate. Bucky watched, distantly, as Steve tore off a bit of his tattered sleeve and dampened it on the rainwater collecting in the grooves of the truck bed. He blinked as Steve lifted it to his cheek, gently wiping off the dirt from his ill-advised sprawl in the mud.

"Falsworth told me what you did," Steve said quietly as he worked, his free hand still resting on Bucky's knee as though he was afraid to let go. "They didn't know your name, but he recognized you once we were out of there. 'That insane American soldier.' You went out of your way to get noticed, didn't you? You made yourself a target for Zola."

Bucky frowned, glancing away. He couldn't remember a lot of the past week, and most of what he could, he tried to forget. But he could recall the prison cells, distantly. Watching soldier after soldier dragged off, never to return; watching his friends dragged off to their deaths. Knowing that Steve had somehow been accepted into the military; knowing that it was only a stroke of chance and bad health that kept it from being Steve hauled away. So he had fought, and he had taunted, and he'd thrown out fake information that might make them think he knew more than he did. That might make them pick him instead of someone else.

He shook his head briefly.

"Lots of crazies around, you know that," he mumbled.

" _Bucky_ —"

Bucky blinked as Steve's arms suddenly wrapped around him like a vise, engulfing him in warmth and protection: the familiar smell of smoke and gunpowder and _Steve_ , scrawny skinny Steve who would never change no matter how many drugs they pumped into him. He held onto Bucky like he was afraid he would vanish at any moment, clinging onto him tight.

"I thought you were _dead_ ," Steve whispered. "I—you stupid, half-brained recklessly noble _idiot_. What you went through—what you did…"

Bucky closed his eyes, turning his face into Steve's neck. A sudden wave of exhaustion crashed over him, the memories and understanding of just what he'd suffered finally sinking in, hitting him hard in the chest. He could have died. He almost did, save for the grace of god and Captain America. But he'd done his duty, protected who he could, and now—now, he could rest.

He slumped against Steve's chest, unable to hold himself up anymore, especially now that he didn't have to. Steve let out a quiet yelp of surprise but he never wavered; never came close to letting him fall.

"I've got you," he murmured instead, cradling Bucky against him gently. "I've got you now."


End file.
